What was your first pc gaming memory?

[Scarecrow1001]

I actually am not certain, but, if I had to guess, my earliest memory would be playing Red Alert 2, and then not being able to get past a certain Campaign mission so my brother did it for me under the condition I made him a freshly squeezed orange juice. It took me as long to make it as it did for him to do the stupid mission.

 

[Seracen]

Can't remember the FIRST one...likely something I played at the school computer room. The first MEMORABLE games, however...

Wing Commander and the Lucas Art's adventure games (Dig, Full Throttle).

 

[wcaypahwat]

Wolfenstein3D with my Grandad... Later moved on to Doom, and some submarine sim called Wolfpack.
Later got our own family computer, a 486, had a bunch of freeware stuff pre-installed that kept me going until the turn of the millenium.

 

[ExtraDebit]

My father took me to the arcade when I was 2 or 3 back in '85 and it was with these cars keep coming up from behind you and you have to dodge them, cant remember the name.

The very first I actually own is a nintendo watch game with those old black and white lcd screens, it's about one dude trying to juggle block 4 man holes so others could pass.

Then there was pong on a black and white tube..........fuck I feel old.

 

[Headsprouter]

I remember DOOM, Quake and Chasm. Then there was a Games Galore disc I think is still floating about.

 

[Xariat]

Sitting on my dad's lap watching him play Serious Sam, I was maybe 5 or 6 years old at the time. Not sure why my parents let me watch but I remember thinking it was a super cool game.

 

[Atmos Duality]

This
And this:

Watching my dad play when I was 3. I cannot believe Tower of Doom used to scare me.
I think it was the alien nature of the sound effects on my overactive imagination.

 

[L. Declis]

My first PC gaming memory was Civilization 1. It came in that massive box, which just had a crap ton of floopy disks and a manual.

Everything, Cities and Units, were just squares which moved around, and railroads were OP as all kinds of hell, and you could Stack of Doom everything. I didn't remember the finer points, but I liked building a lot of cities and researching stuff; if it ever said "Hey, there, Mr. Republic, would you like a Monarchy?" I'd just click yes to get rid of the pop-up in the way of the cities and science.

Then I moved onto Civ 2, disliked Civ 3, but Civ 5 got me hooked, which has sinced moved to Europa Universalis 4.

 

[Gormech]

My first was this old game called Ned's Nightmare. You play as a child who after consuming a large amount of sugar and going to sleep, must explore various nightmare scenes such as a graveyard area with zombies and demons to medical areas where you have to wander the dental landscape of a rotting mouth at the dentist while trying not to get stabbed by a doctor with a giant syringe.
Music was great, plenty of easter eggs, and just overall fun to explore.

 

[ViridianV6]

My first that I remember is Epic Pinball demo, where we only had the Android table and my sister and I would switch playing whenever we lost a ball.

Good times.

Other games I have fond memories of at that time were Tyrian 2000, Jazz Jackrabbit, Worms 2, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and emulated Pokemon Silver.

Also fuck SkiFree and that demon chicken monster thing that eats you after you complete the slalom and then jumps up and down.

 

[BitterLemon]

I believe I was 8yo and my best friend's sister got a 486 because she was studying what used to be called here "data processing" (a technical course to learn programming). We instantly dropped the NES he had and the PC became our videogame. I guess the first games we've played were Prince of Persia, Zaxxon and TestDrive.

Back then, I didn't knew shit about computers, so every computer I'd stumble upon, I'd try to use the DOS commands I had learnt to start those games, like if every computer was a magic infinite game box. You just had to know the secret words:

C:\\> cd games

 

[hawkeye52]

Worms. I was about 4 I think

 

[KorLeonis]

Fortress of the Witch King on the Commodore 64. Turn based RPG that you can start and finish in a single session, text based with some graphics. I was completely addicted.

All hail the Commodore 64 playin' master race. My elementary school had 2 of these bad boys. I skipped recess ever chance I got to play it.

 

[jademunky]

Right up there with you as well as owning an original copy of Zork in my early years and knowing not what the hell a Grue was or why it kept eating me.

Now I don't feel so alone!

I admit that Zork was one of those games I admired from a distance. Those text-only games seemed way too advanced for me, I had to go over to an older friend's house to watch him play.

 

[Ratty]

Every post in this thread should start with "I'm dating myself here but..." lol oh well I'll bite.

I remember being really impressed with the graphics for some Magic Schoolbus (I think) adventure game-type thing in 1st grade. But the first PC game I actually remember playing a lot was Doom and Doom 2.

Spoiler: Specifically the Doom95 port.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Right up there with you as well as owning an original copy of Zork in my early years and knowing not what the hell a Grue was or why it kept eating me.

Now I don't feel so alone!

I admit that Zork was one of those games I admired from a distance. Those text-only games seemed way too advanced for me, I had to go over to an older friend's house to watch him play.

I feel like an outcast sometimes because of how far back my gaming experience goes. I had a friend who was a few years older than me as well who taught me how to play text based games and later introduced me to the typing teacher that was Sierra games (thank you Sierra for making me type and read so damn fast).

 

[Kekkonen1]

I'm old enough to have played text adventures. Earliest graphical games I can remember, my cousin had an amiga or commodore (can't remember which) where the games where stored on old audio cassette tapes (long before CD:s for those of you too young) and it took like 15-20 minutes to load a game. We usually put a game such as Spy vs Spy on load, went out and played football in the yard, then came back and played the game (or put it on load again if it had failed to load properly which was not unusual).

Oldest PC I can't really remember, my grandfather who works as an accountant, had a PC for work long before anyone else I knew and I used to play games like Leisure Suit Larry on it. He would always have to help me with the questions in the beginning which I think constituted the copy protection. He always answered the questions for me even though now, when I'm much older, I realise that he didn't know the answers to those questions any more than I did

 

[Ratty]

Right up there with you as well as owning an original copy of Zork in my early years and knowing not what the hell a Grue was or why it kept eating me.

Now I don't feel so alone!

I admit that Zork was one of those games I admired from a distance. Those text-only games seemed way too advanced for me, I had to go over to an older friend's house to watch him play.

I feel like an outcast sometimes because of how far back my gaming experience goes. I had a friend who was a few years older than me as well who taught me how to play text based games and later introduced me to the typing teacher that was Sierra games (thank you Sierra for making me type and read so damn fast).

I would really like to play text adventure games but I just don't have the patience for it. I dislike knowing the answer to a problem and then trying to figure out exactly how the author wanted that answer to be phrased for 10 hours.
Have you guys seen the documentary GET LAMP? It was uploaded by Google as part of their techtalk series.
The movie starts at about 7:30 in.

Spoiler: Bonus

 

[otakon17]

My grandfather has a type of gameshow game on something running on what I was pretty sure was MS DOS, monochrome monitor and all. As for a 'proper' PC game, it was Age of Empires II and Fallout 2. One of my teachers had it on his computer in his classroom, and allowed us to play on it as long as we continued to pay attention to class. I was on it the most; this was back in high school in my freshman year if I remember correctly and I was so astounded by it at the time still. It was... 1997 I think.

 

[nevarran]

Going to a friend of mine, to play Karateka ah, good times...
Interestingly enough, the original Karateka is released the year I was born. So, I just met my destiny that day at my friends house